Richard Weter

A former Navy SEAL. A missing federal judge. A bayou that has been keeping secrets a lot longer than he has.

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Cover of The New Marshal in Town: a man in a dark suit aims a pistol across a foggy swamp at two armed men.

Brody Rockland came home from Afghanistan with a war injury and a set of skills nobody wanted to see wasted. So he pinned on a badge.

Single, handsome, rich, and better at making things right than at making friends, Rockland joins the U.S. Marshals Service. It doesn’t take him long to make enemies.

Every stop takes him deeper into the fog.

  1. Afghanistan

    Where he learned the job

    Years as a Navy SEAL, living and fighting beside Afghan tribesmen. He learned to read people whose ways were nothing like his own, and to trust his training when nothing else held. He’s going to need both.

  2. Washington, D.C.

    Where he made the wrong enemies

    Stationed in the capital, the new deputy marshal runs straight into the Russian mob and becomes a problem they intend to remove. The director decides Washington needs a cooling-off period. Rockland needs a test.

  3. Houma, Louisiana

    Where the judge disappeared

    A disreputable federal judge from New Orleans has vanished. His vacation home outside Houma holds broken glass and blood. Rockland is sent south with something to prove, into a culture as foreign to him as any he’s known, beside a Cajun deputy sheriff named Holly DuBois.

    Morning sun breaking through mist among cypress trunks and knees in a dark swamp.

The judge is gone. No ransom ever came.

  • Who gains if a crooked judge never comes home?
  • What is buried out in the bayou, and who put it there?
  • How far will the Russian mob follow one marshal?

★★★★★

“The first page captured my attention and I couldn’t put the book down.”

Cheryl Day, verified purchase on Amazon

5.0 out of 5 stars from every Amazon reader so far.

Why readers can’t put it down

  • Written by a real detectiveNearly 30 years of police work in the Ozarks sit behind every interview, clue, and lie.
  • A bayou you can smellRichard lived in Louisiana’s southern wetlands. The swamp, the people, and the wildlife are drawn from life.
  • Twists right to the endA whodunit with a federal judge, a Cajun deputy, and the Russian mob all pulling in different directions.
Cypress trunks standing in still, dark Louisiana swamp water.

Thirty years of casework. One debut novel.

Richard Weter spent nearly three decades as a police detective in the rugged Ozark Mountains of Southwest Missouri, then lived for years in the wetlands of south Louisiana, among people and wildlife that sometimes dispense their own kind of justice.

Meet Richard Weter